Awesome- congrats on a steller buy. I'm glad someone bought it- I was checking the thread too much One of these days. Safe travels.

 

Ended up stopping in Sioux city Iowa as it was 3:00am EDT. We're through Sioux falls onto rapid city, then onto Montana! Will be trying to get as far as we can today, my co pilot has a flight tomorrow evening out of Seattle and back to DFW...

1469 miles left, we've come 1650 so far!

 

Wow, great way to learn your new car

 

Since a few of you mentioned earplugs, there was a thread on the 997 forum a while back about dangerous noise levels in convertibles. I posted about a guy I saw wearing a BOSE noise canceling headset in his Boxster. I've since tried that myself, and it really works to remove the road noise and cut back on fatigue. You do lose some situational awareness, because it also takes away some of the engine noise of surrounding vehicles. You have to very diligent in using your mirrors, looking around, etc.

 

Be sure and check the inner tread of your rear tires.
Long distance driving and certain alignements can bald them very quick while still showing good tread on the outter.

"flip" them to get you home

 

i've just started trying a pair of etymotic er-20 earplugs in the car.
these reduce the sound level by up to 20db but retain most of the frequency range.
the drone is still there as it's very low frequency, but the mids and highs are not bad. my ears ring though, so not sure if they are doing me any good, as i can hear more ringing in my head.

 

nice ride enjoy your trip

 

How fast will you go in Montana?

 

I have a new QC15 headset and I tried it out in the car yesterday. The effect is amazing, it removes all the road noise frequencies. I used the smaller QC3 headset previously and it was also quite effective, and less obvious. I've tried in-ear headsets before and I've felt they conduct some vibration noise into the ear.

 

So we went from Sioux City to in between Missoula and Couer D'alene, Idaho. We went to a max of 135 for short bursts through the hilly areas in South Dakota and Montana. At one point near Rapid City we passed 15 cop cars in a 10 mile stretch. Funny thing was these were the first cops we saw on I-90 in SD at all...

We were going to stop in Missoula to stay on Saturday night, but after calling 22 hotels there was no availability at any of them. No idea what was going on, but damn...

should have tried something, I had my noise cancelling headphones, just don't like wearing them while driving...

Had orbit set me up with a street alignment paying particular attention to the toe in settings so that wear wasn't going to be so bad...

I'm going to quiet the car as much as possible, I'm not entering the 24hr of Lemans with this ride and want to enjoy it a bit on the street. So we'll put the mufflers back in and the sharky Erik sent me. If that's not enough then I will find more!

I think part of the issue is the crack in the center muffler orbit found. Erik tried to find a muffler before we left, but no luck (at least not for the $200-300 range!). I read some other 997 folks saying the muffler hole made a dramatic difference in how loud the car was and since this one has the side muffler deletes, and a crack in the muffler before we left, I can attest to it getting louder and more drony as we went on.

Orbit sent the mufflers today, will be installing those myself on Wednesday when they arrive. Also need to bed the rear brakes in a bit as they are super squeeky. May chamfer the edges of the pads as well to help them quiet down a bit... Not sure if I buy the holes in the rotor filling with brake dust being the reason for the squeaking/squealing. Would love to hear some opinions!

Ended up making it home at 3:00pm Sunday after dropping my buddy off at the airport.

All in all a fun and memorable trip, car on KW coils is taught, but not punishing, with good mufflers and non squealing brakes would have been perfect!

Thanks for the support and for welcoming me into the GT3 club!

Jamie

 

Just caught up with this thread. Congrats on the RS and welcome! I bought my first Porsche in San Diego and drove to Atlanta with my youngest along. Great memories.

 

So I got the side mufflers off and the Sharky put on today. When I took off the center muffler. I figured out why the car was droning so bad... It had a hole the size of my fist in it right between the outlets...

I would say it was cracked...

 

You will love the sharky

 

+1

 

working on deglazing the rear pads a bit and chamfering the edges so they don't squeal quite so bad (will go bed them in later today). And lastly a wash to get the bugs off the pumpkin.

anyone have a trick for getting all the plastered on bugs off of the radiators?